An interview on The PA Report talks with Valve's Gabe Newell, discussing some general topics with Valve's Managing Director, whose beard is growing in nicely (though not to the magnificent degree mine has at this point). The discussion covers things like his work schedule, his fascination with wearable computers, the possibility Valve might someday sell hardware, pricing games on Steamand more (thanks nin). He also offers responses to questions about to what degree customers won games purchased on Steam:

But even from kind of a more general point of view, you have services like Steam or Origin where these many purchases and micro-transactions and all these transactions we’re making through multiple companies are kind of tied to this overreaching account. Do you have lawyers who kind of look at the legal implication of where exactly you fit into that relationship?

Yeah, we have lawyers who look at stuff all the time, I’m not sure I’m answering your question directly. It’s sort of like this kind of messy issue, and it doesn’t really matter a whole lot what the legal issues are, the real thing is that you have to make your customers happy at the end of the day and if you’re not doing that it doesn’t really matter what you think about various supreme court decisions or EU decisions. If you’re not making your customers happy you’re doing something stupid and we certainly always want to make our customers happy. And I think we have a track record of having done that.

It's probably not far off from what outside the industry business types think about Steam and Valve. If you don't know the studio culture and Gabe's background you would probably have a totally different mindset about them. But even then, like others have been discussing, it would get a facebook-esque valuation making it difficult to pick up for just anyone.

avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 15:33:Well, we'll know in 2 years of less. Steam _will_ have suits after the sale. And Gabe will be in bermuda, having retired after the sale in which he will profit immensely for selling.

My half-serious hunch is that MS will buy Steam as part of their attempt to fully occupy our living rooms with a "unified digital media box." And yea MS has the cash for it.

Actually any number of hedgefunds have the cash to buy Steam right now, strip it of its assets over a few years, and sell it as a skeleton -- standard practice. But that's another topic!

What suits? WTH are you talking about? Valve and Steam aren't on the market.

Gabe would sell his left nut before shedding the most successful studio in private ownership. They are able to do what they do because Valve is a private company with no shareholders or board of directors.

avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 15:33:Well, we'll know in 2 years of less. Steam _will_ have suits after the sale. And Gabe will be in bermuda, having retired after the sale in which he will profit immensely for selling.

Seriously though, I would think it would end up being far more lucrative than that in the long term if it hasn't been already. I'd be surprised if Valve sold for anything less than [Dr. Evil Voice] "ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS". I certainly wouldn't suspect that they would go actively seeking out buyers.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 15:33:Well, we'll know in 2 years of less. Steam _will_ have suits after the sale. And Gabe will be in bermuda, having retired after the sale in which he will profit immensely for selling.

My half-serious hunch is that MS will buy Steam as part of their attempt to fully occupy our living rooms with a "unified digital media box." And yea MS has the cash for it.

Actually any number of hedgefunds have the cash to buy Steam right now, strip it of its assets over a few years, and sell it as a skeleton -- standard practice. But that's another topic!

It's a topic that makes no sense. What "Assets" would you strip from Steam, other than a few thousand (I'm guessing) content clusters? Steam's value derives almost entirely from its customer base and its revenue, neither of which is something you can 'sell off.'

And MS would never buy Steam. The LAST thing they want to do is encourage people to play games on the PC.

With the money it's making and the funding it provides Valve, why on earth would they do that? Your tinfoil is showing.

Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.

The publishers aren't all that interested because they know it would represent a conflict of interest to other publishers and almost immediately lose value when it stops getting products as readily. That means they're interested, but again not willing to pay that enormous price tag.

Which publisher even has the capital to buy Steam? What would Valve's asking price be... 5 billion dollars? Ten? I doubt any game publisher has that kind of money available to begin with.

avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 07:40:Whenever Steam is sold off for $$ (and it will) there's all kinds of unpleasant possibilities. A $20 a year maintenance charge to access your games. $20 per install of network client on different computers. $20 to create a Steam account for the first time. etc. And believe me, the suits sitting around the table at Steam are already thinking about the above.

Look what netflix tried to do when it split the service, reduced the services, and raised the prices (though happily it failed at all of that). ** We already know this is what digital business can do legally to bring in more revenue on existing user accounts.** Steam is no different. There's nothing legal to stop Steam from changing the rules of access tomorrow morning and then again 6 months from now. Geez look how often phone billing rules change and nothing ever happens to them via any legal entity!

So yea, a "game on an install disk" seems extra extra quaint in the digital age but the bottomline is that owning a game disk was far better for the consumer versus the unknown of buying games off of a network client.

There's kind of a difference between Netflix and Steam though, and that's that Netflix started coming up with all their weird shit when their growth stagnated and their costs spiraled out of control. Steam is still growing double digits every year.

If and when that eventually ends, they might come up with weird shit too, but on the flipside, Steam isn't a publicly traded company and they have no fucking useless assholes shareholders to please. So it's not really a given that Steam is going to turn against its own client base in an effort to wring a few extra pennies out of them.

Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 10:56:So GameStop is interested in playing around in what will ultimately put them out of business, but they are not interested in buying Steam. At this point I'm not convinced they have the capital required to buy Steam.

Thats probably because they want to build a competitor at a reasonable price, not "waste" (which is how they would likely view it) a bunch of cash in acquiring the existing customer base of the biggest one on the market. I'm sure they are arrogant enough to think they can beat steam since they have the used game market pretty well sewn up, and they have a good chunk of retail console too. I wouldn't be surprised if you are right though, that they don't have the capital it would take.

All that assumes that steam is even for sale. Gabe's not about to sell it. He's not in it for the money or he'd have sold out and retired long ago. He's so "obsessed" (his word not mine) about employee health, if nothing else he wouldn't do that for the sole reason it would effect how his employees feel.

Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:46:Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.

Did you notice that gamestop bought out impulse? They already have their own download delivery platform now.

I actually tried it out last week, to see if I could access my old purchased impulse games like GalCiv. I was able to access them all. Also to my surprise, I had a token I didn't spend back in the day for stardock, so gamestop gave me $7 credit for it. I was impressed that they did that, I would have expected gamestop to just say "screw it" and not credit any previous customers of stardock with gamestop credit. I picked up a cheap indie type game from gamestop with that credit.

So far (now that I've tried both), I've been more impressed with gamestop's purchase of impulse, than EA's attempt at origin.

Yup, they bought out Impulse1) How much did Impluse cost? Not much. Probably not even 5% what Steam would.2) How much have they invested in Impulse? Not much. Do you even hear about it anymore?

So GameStop is interested in playing around in what will ultimately put them out of business, but they are not interested in buying Steam. At this point I'm not convinced they have the capital required to buy Steam.

Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:46:Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.

Did you notice that gamestop bought out impulse? They already have their own download delivery platform now.

I actually tried it out last week, to see if I could access my old purchased impulse games like GalCiv. I was able to access them all. Also to my surprise, I had a token I didn't spend back in the day for stardock, so gamestop gave me $7 credit for it. I was impressed that they did that, I would have expected gamestop to just say "screw it" and not credit any previous customers of stardock with gamestop credit. I picked up a cheap indie type game from gamestop with that credit.

So far (now that I've tried both), I've been more impressed with gamestop's purchase of impulse, than EA's attempt at origin.

Dev wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 13:05:Also worth a look is the tour through the offices complete with a lot of neat pictures and descriptions:penny arcade tour

One caption in particular caught my eye:

A glance into one of the many Cabals that spring up. Any time a group of two or more people has an idea, they can move their desks to start their own Cabal in an empty room. As the project comes together, employees can join in and move their desks to that Cabal if they feel they can help out

Great for employees. Not as great for getting projects pushed out.

I honestly think that is because Gabe wants to nurture creativity over timelines.

Name one of us that wishes we didn't have that kind of freedom at one point or another...

For that, I applaud him (though, as a customer, I'm still screaming "WTF happened to Half-Life?" ).

With the money it's making and the funding it provides Valve, why on earth would they do that? Your tinfoil is showing.

Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.

The publishers aren't all that interested because they know it would represent a conflict of interest to other publishers and almost immediately lose value when it stops getting products as readily. That means they're interested, but again not willing to pay that enormous price tag.